Editor's note: To close out 2016, the Post-Tribune is taking a look back at the news through the eyes of people who helped make it.

John Halstead said he didn't even recycle a few years ago.

But in May, he was one of 41 people arrested at the BP Whiting Refinery, protesting their oil sands production and urging the use of renewable sources of energy.

Being arrested and a defendant in a court case has been a peculiar experience for Halstead -- he's a Merrillville attorney. However, the BP and Standing Rock protests, in addition to the presidential election, have shaped Halstead's year, and going into 2017, he said he will continue to have a focus on environmental issues.

Marching toward the BP entrance with a group of people behind him on May 15, Halstead remembers seeing a couple of police cars at the end of the street and thinking "it was kind of anti-climactic," he said. But then he turned the corner and saw police in riot gear.

"I thought, oh crap, what have I got myself into?" Halstead said. "If I hadn't been holding hands with the person next to me, I probably would've just frozen."

The protesters formed a circle at the refinery's main entrance and refused to leave despite warnings from law enforcement, he said, leading to their arrests.

Through the rest of 2016, their court case continued. A rally is planned for Jan. 13, the same day as their final court hearing, at Lake County Superior Court in Hammond to show support for the protesters, as well as send a message encouraging renewable energy sources a week before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration day.

Halstead wasn't always involved in environmental activism, but he remembers a kind of turning point when he visited his in-laws in Utah. He went to see the Pando, a quaking aspen grove of 40,000 trees connected at the roots that are at least 80,000 years old, he said. Halstead said he asked a ranger about a portion of the trees that were fenced off and was told they were being threatened by invasive species.

"It's the first time I had been face to face with something that I can say, this is happening because of climate change," Halstead said.

That's when he said he realized he didn't have to go across the country to see the effects of climate change -- "I've got BP in my back yard," he said.

He started talking to people in the area and got more involved. At a Minnesota protest, he heard people chanting, "This is what democracy looks like," and it gave him chills, he said.

"I was like, yeah, democracy isn't just what happens in the voting booth. This is democracy. This is people expressing their right to free speech and their right to assembly," Halstead said.

Halstead circulated petitions involving the Standing Rock protests against an oil pipeline in North Dakota. Although he later learned they had already returned, Halstead helped start a petition to bring back Indiana law enforcement that were sent to help North Dakota police. More recently, he helped create a petition to prevent Indiana officers from being sent up there again and urging Hoosier law enforcement to declare support of the Standing Rock protesters.

In November, the results of the presidential election came as a surprise to Halstead as he's continued his environmental efforts. After the initial shock, Halstead said he has seen people he knows become involved in movements that hadn't before. The way he sees it, "in a perverse way, the election of Trump may actually be a really good thing for the environmental movement."

"Elections have the effect of making a lot of people feel voiceless, not only because their candidate didn't get elected, but ... when the popular vote and the Electoral College don't line up, a lot of people feel disenfranchised. But we don't have to wait for election day to express ourselves. We can get out in the streets and do it now," he said.